About the Author

Dr. Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History at Rowan University, where she teaches American, Jewish, and women's history. She received her BA from Goucher College and her PhD from Rutgers University. She is the author of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920 (NYU Press, 2005) and Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1925 (Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2007).

20th-century Jewish Immigration

Jewish Immigration to the United States

All U.S. history textbooks cover the great wave of immigration that brought approximately 25 million people to America from 1880—1924. These immigrants came from many places and for many reasons, and most narratives provide adequate coverage of the push and pull factors behind decisions to emigrate, the difficult journey, and the struggle to adapt to a new country. Textbooks provide a fairly standard account of chain migration, the creation of ethnic urban neighborhoods, the Americanization movement, and the ultimately successful nativist campaigns for restrictive immigration legislation.

A closer examination of one group during this period allows for a deeper look at the causes and consequences of immigration. Eastern European Jews are often mentioned in textbook accounts as examples of the new religious groups entering the U.S., as frequent participants in the labor activism that characterized industrial development, and as significant contributors to popular American culture, especially through music and movies.

Several other significant elements of the Jewish immigrant experience, however, receive little attention. A closer look sheds light on the complicated nature of turn-of-the-century immigration to America.

The “Old” Immigrants and the “New” Immigrants

When the nearly 2.5 million Eastern European Jews (along with significant numbers of central and western European Jews and some Sephardic Jews from the Ottoman Empire) arrived in the U.S., they joined a population of some 250,000 Jews already living in America. Some of these families lived in America for decades and even generations. Although the primarily Yiddish culture, greater propensity toward radical politics, and somewhat more traditional religious orientation of many of the new arrivals would transform the character of American Jewry, interaction between the groups did so as well.

In both a genuine, massive effort to help their fellow Jews and an attempt to ward off increased anti-Semitism, the established Jewish community created an unprecedented network of benevolent societies, settlement houses, educational facilities, and charitable organizations to aid the new Jewish immigrants. The resulting network of communal agencies became models of the new field of social work for all Americans during the Progressive Era and beyond. Jewish women played a key role in these endeavors through such organizations as the National Council of Jewish Women and synagogue sisterhoods (see Primary Source National Council of Jewish Women [1926]).

There was considerable tension between those who demanded instantaneous Americanization of everything from ritual practice to foodways and those who insisted on a more gradual acculturation, but a shared wellspring of religious and cultural traditions helped keep even the most contentious elements of the American Jewish community intertwined in some ways.

The established Jewish community created an unprecedented network of benevolent societies, settlement houses, educational facilities, and charitable organizations to aid the new Jewish immigrants.

One example is the 1910 Protocol of Peace that ended a nationally significant strike within the heavily Jewish garment industry in New York (see Primary Source The Protocol of Peace [1910]). This agreement was negotiated and signed by Jewish communal leaders and lawyers who represented both Jewish garment manufacturers and factory owners and Jewish workers and labor activists.

American Jewish history thus provides a test case for the question of how different the experiences of the “old” and “new” immigrants actually were, with a growing number of historians convinced that the period between 1820 and 1924 should be seen as a continuous century of American Jewish migration with more structural similarities than discontinuities.

Ports of Entry and Sites of Settlement

Textbook accounts of turn-of-the-century immigration virtually all call attention to the two major points of entry into the U.S.: Ellis Island (after 1892) for European immigrants, and Angel Island (after 1910) for Asian immigrants. However, this narrative leaves out the hundreds of thousands of Mexican and Canadian immigrants who crossed land borders. In the Jewish case, it also omits the Galveston Plan and consequently fails to deal with the Jewish immigrants who did not cluster in large urban, industrial centers like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago (see Primary Source Mendelson Letter [1909]).

It is important to recognize that Jewish immigrants settled all over the United States.

Concerned about overcrowding and the possible negative attention drawn by densely populated Jewish communities, a number of American Jewish leaders worked to encourage Jewish immigrants to enter the U.S. at the port of Galveston, TX. From that point the immigrants fanned out all over the interior of the United States with the support of the international Jewish Territorial Organization.

Although the Galveston Plan did not attract huge numbers during its operation from 19071914, it is important to recognize that Jewish immigrants settled all over the U.S., trying their hand at everything from small businesses in the South to agricultural colonies in the Upper Midwest. As was the case with numerous other immigrant groups, the Jewish immigrant experience was considerably more diverse than is usually recognized, encompassing life in small-town America as well as on the Lower East Side of New York City.

Anti-Semitism

These restrictions kept out innumerable European Jewish refugees who might otherwise have been saved from the horrors of the Holocaust.

Wherever Jews lived in America, they faced anti-Semitism. That had been the case since before the American Revolution, but the huge increase in the Jewish population during the period of mass migration contributed to the marked growth of anti-Semitism. This is an important subject to address because it complicates the idea of the U.S. as a bastion of religious tolerance that welcomed anyone fleeing religious persecution.

Some textbook narratives point out that Jews, along with Catholics and African Americans, were the targets of the Ku Klux Klan revival that began during World War I, and several mention the 1913 establishment of the Anti-Defamation League to fight anti-Semitism. Few textbooks, if any, however, mention the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, an event that shook American Jewry to its core (see Primary Source Lynching of Leo Frank [1915] *WARNING: Graphic Content*). Only rarely do they mention the virulent, unapologetic anti-Semitism of automobile magnate Henry Ford at a time when he was the most admired man in America.

Widespread American anti-Semitism led to quota systems at many American universities and contributed to the restrictive immigration legislation of the 1920s. These restrictions kept out innumerable European Jewish refugees who might otherwise have been saved from the horrors of the Holocaust.

Given the numerous immigrant groups involved, it is understandable that textbooks cannot devote too much time to any particular community. The tantalizing references to Jewish immigration to the U.S. offered in standard accounts should serve as an invitation to probe more deeply into the rich, textured history of all the immigrant groups that altered the course of American history.

The Protocol of Peace (1910)

Annotation

The Protocol of Peace settled a nine-week strike of cloak makers in New York City. This strike was only one in a series of such labor actions during the early 20th century, but the intervention of the established, middle- and upper-class Jewish community helped bring the parties to the negotiating table. While not everyone involved was Jewish, the vast majority of the manufacturers and most of the workers were, as were the negotiators, including Meyer London, the attorney for the union (a Socialist who was later elected to represent the Lower East Side district in Congress); Julius Cohen, the attorney for the manufacturers; and Louis Marshall. The provision that Jewish workers who observed the Sabbath could work on Sundays instead demonstrated the Jewish sensibilities involved in the negotiations. Less obvious from the document, with its talk of “union men,” was the high percentage of women workers in the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. Although the strike would not have succeeded without these women, the minimum-wage scale for various job descriptions set up by the Protocol of Peace continued to discriminate against women, with the jobs designated for women earning less than similar jobs designated for men. The Protocol of Peace was, for its time, quite favorable for the workers, who won a 50-hour work week. However, working conditions remained deplorable, as tragically seen in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire only six months later.

Primary Source(s)

Excerpt from"The Protocol of Peace in the Cloak, Suit, and Skirt Trade":
Protocol of an agreement entered into this 2nd day of September, 1910, between the Cloak, Suit & Skirt Manufacturers’ Protective Association, herein called the manufacturers, and the following locals of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. . .

Whereas, differences have arisen between the manufacturers and their employees who are members of the unions with regard to various matters, which have resulted in a strike, and it is now desired by the parties hereto to terminate said strike and to arrive at an understanding with regard to the future relations between the manufacturers and their employees, it is therefore stipulated as follows:

First: So far as practicable, and by December 31st, 1910, electric power be installed for the operation of machines, and that no charge for power be made against any of the employees of the manufacturers.

Second: No charge shall be made against any employees of the manufacturers for material except in the event of the negligence or wrongful act of the employees resulting in loss or injury to the employer. . .

Fourth: No work shall be given to or taken to employees to be performed at their homes.

Seventh: Employees shall not be required to work during the ten (10) legal holidays as established by the laws of the State of New York; and no employees shall be permitted to work more than six (6) days in each week, those observing Saturday to be permitted to work Sunday in lieu thereof; all week workers to receive pay for legal holidays.

Eighth: The manufacturers will establish a regular weekly pay day and they will pay for labor in cash, and each piece worker will be paid for all work delivered as soon as his work is inspected and approved, which shall be within a reasonable time.

Tenth:. . .The weekly hours of labor shall consist of fifty (50) hour in six (6) working days, to wit, nine hours on all days except the sixth day, which shall consist of five hours only.

Fourteenth: Each member of the manufacturers is to maintain a union shop; a “union shop” being understood to refer to a shop where union standards as to working conditions, hours of labor and rates of wages as herein stipulated prevail, and where, when hiring help, union men are preferred; it being recognized that, since there are differences in degrees of skill among those employed in the trade, employers shall have freedom of selection as between one union man and another, and shall not be confined to any list, nor bound to follow any prescribed order whatever.

Sixteenth: The parties hereby establish a Board of Arbitration to consist of three (3) members, composed of one nominee of the manufacturers, one nominee of the unions, and one representative of the public, the latter to be named by Meyer London, Esq., and Julius Cohen, Esq., and in the even of their inability to agree, by Louis Marshall, Esq.

Citation

"The Protocol of Peace in the Cloak, Suit, and Skirt Trade, September 2, 1910" in Jacob Rader Marcus, ed., The Jew in the American World: A Source Book. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.

National Council of Jewish Women (1926)

Annotation

The National Council of Jewish Women was founded in 1893 with a primarily religious and educational mission, but, like many Progressive Era women’s organizations, soon turned to a variety of reform activities. The National Council of Jewish Women pioneered a program that sent representatives to the docks to make sure that Jewish women immigrating alone had some place safe to go. Razovsky headed the organization’s immigrant aid efforts and lobbied for the Cable Act of 1922, which guaranteed independent female citizenship (though only to women married to men eligible for naturalization).

Primary Source(s)

Do You Wish to Become a Useful Citizen?
Many organizations — public and private — are eager to help you prepare yourself for citizenship. The Public Schools, the settlements and neighborhood houses near your home, all have day and evening classes to which they invite you. Go to them. If you have little children whom you cannot leave at home, take them with you; they will be cared for in kindergartens while you attend your class. The National Council of Jewish Women have organized English and citizenship classes in every city in this country for women who wish to become citizens. If you wish information about these classes, write to:

Department of Immigrant Aide,
The National Council of Jewish Women,
799 Broadway, New York City

This Department will be glad to refer you to the proper classes in your city. Attend these classes regularly, even if it means that you must work harder when you come home. You will feel repaid. You will find a new world opened to you. You will realize you are a human begin, not merely a kitchen drudge ߜ always scrubbing and washing and cooking, and never having any outside interests or pleasures. You will be proud of yourself when you can read your children's school books and reports. And your husband and children will be proud of you too!

Mendelson Letter (1909)

Annotation

The Galveston Plan demonstrated not only the relationship between the established American Jewish community and Jewish immigrants but also the connections among Jews worldwide. The Jewish Territorial Organization (in English abbreviated to ITO, an acronym derived from the Hebrew/Yiddish alphabet used for the agency’s official name) had representatives stationed throughout Europe to assist Jewish immigrants who agreed to exchange control over where they were placed in the U.S. for full payment of all costs associated with the immigration process. In the U.S., wealthy Jewish banker and philanthropist Jacob Schiff funded the network of representatives who met and assisted immigrants in Galveston and found communities across the interior of the country that were willing to secure jobs and housing for the new arrivals. Mendelson was not correct that no Jewish immigrants stayed in Galveston, but the majority were very quickly moved on to their new homes. Although it probably was easier to earn a living in these towns, the small size of the Jewish communities proved troubling for some, and a sizable percentage of the Galveston Plan immigrants eventually moved again to areas with larger Jewish populations.

Primary Source(s)

Excerpt from Sheyne-Gadye Mendelson's letter of July 28, 1909:
Burlington, July 28, 1909

My dear, dear brother!

I can finally write you a letter and share everything with you. I did write you a postcard from Galveston. That was on Saturday. We arrived here Monday evening at nine o’clock. Someone was already waiting for us here and had already taken care of everything. We have free room and board for a week, which is naturally being paid for by the ITO. Next week we’ll start working in a button factory, where we’ll start making 4 or 5 dollars a week and we can work our way up until each of us can earn 10 dollars a week. Burlington is a country [sic], that is, a small city that has about twenty-five thousand residents. The city is growing, has train connections with the biggest cities, and is 175 English miles from Chicago. The climate here is temperate, that is, not too hot and not too cold. It’s not too expensive to live here. I hope we’ll be able to work our way up. Other than that, we’re healthy and cheerful. . .

The entire journey to Galveston was very nice, but it got hotter and hotter by the day, so much so that we would walk around barefoot in our undergarments and sleep on the deck. It was impossible to stay in the cabin because of the heat. But aside from that, we had a good time on the ship. There were [330] emigrants, about 200 Jews, most of them going to Baltimore. To Galveston there [43] of us. So we finally arrived on Saturday the 24th in Galveston. It’s hard to imagine how much the ITO did for the emigrants. Picture this, as we disembarked from the ship, the representative of the local committee, Mr. Greenberg, was already there waiting for us and had taken care of everything for us. The ITO emigrants don’t have to pay the 4 dollar head tax for each person that enters America. They picked up our baggage and drove us in cars to the committee’s center, a big, beautiful house with all the comforts, even bathrooms; we each got to take a bath. They gave us only the best food. The same day, they specified where each of us was going to go. No one settles in Galveston. They sent the heavy baggage ahead and gave us free train tickets to wherever each of us was going–Burlington for us. They also gave us food for the trip: eggs, sardines, bread, and other such things. We were on the train for thirty-two house. The trip here from Galveston costs around 25 dollars per ticket per person. The baggage costs money as well. When we got there there was someone waiting for us in the train station who had set everything up for our first week. That also costs money and it was all paid for by the ITO. The only thing left to wish for is that the ITO would be able to influence the entire flow of Jewish emigration and systematically organize it. Then we could hope to be able to concentrate rapidly in one place and live as a normal people, like all others.

Dear brother, I now believe I’ve written you all the details. I will only be able to write about what life is like here after a few weeks when we are better acquainted with this place. In the meantime, we are resting up from the long trip, taking walks. Burlington is a very lovely city. There are not many Jewish families here–maybe all told, twenty families–but everyone is making a nice living.

Capin’s Tailor Shop (1919)

Annotation

Hyman Capin opened the tailor shop pictured here in 1914. By that time he was already an experienced tailor who had worked for the army as well as for himself. Like many Jewish immigrants, Capin migrated more than once, going first from Lithuania to London with his family at age 12, then to New York at 18, then to Harrisburg, PA, where he met his wife Dora, then to Arizona, and then to New Mexico. In the small Southwest towns where the Capin family lived, tailors, many of them Jewish, often stocked their shelves with a variety of goods.

The hatboxes, belts, shoe boxes, and ready-made jackets and shirts on display in the photograph indicate the variety of items available in the store, which also had fitting rooms for customers ordering custom-made clothing. Jewish immigrants frequently employ their relatives, as Capin apparently did with his son-in-law. The photograph shows how formally Capin was dressed, as befit the proprietor of the shop. Capin eventually parlayed his small shop into a formidable retail operation focused on department stores and dry goods, two areas of the economy in which many immigrant Jews found success.

Primary Source(s)

Lynching of Leo Frank (1915) *WARNING: Graphic Content*

Annotation

Leo Frank was a pencil factory supervisor, a Jewish man who had moved South, when 13-year-old employee Mary Phagan was found murdered in April 1913. Convicted in August 1913 after a dubious trial that cast him as both a Yankee and a Jewish outsider, Frank was sentenced to death despite the evidence that his defense team—in a clearly racist manner—presented against another factory worker, an African American man. Georgia governor John M. Slaton, skeptical about the trial, commuted Frank’s sentence to life imprisonment, and in August 1915 a mob of 25 men removed him from his jail cell and hanged him. The lynching sent shock waves throughout the American Jewish community, which had assumed that Jews were safe from European-style pogroms in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Primary Source(s)

Citation

Marietta, Georgia. Lynching of Leo Frank. August 17, 1915. From the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Collection.

Primary Source Annotated Bibliography

Library of Congress. From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America.This Library of Congress exhibit was originally organized to commemorate the 350th anniversary of Jewish settlement in America, usually dated to 1654. The online exhibit draws on a rich variety of sources from the Library of Congress and other repositories, including everything from sheet music to photographs to letters to pamphlets to periodicals. The documents are organized both chronologically and thematically to trace the major themes of the Jewish encounter with freedom in America and the continuous struggle of Jews in America to balance tradition with modernity.

PBS. The Jewish Americans.This six-hour documentary series traces Jewish life in America, with an emphasis on social and cultural history. The companion website includes historical documents, resources for educators and numerous video clips from the series on a variety of topics.

Jewish Women’s Archive.This virtual archive is a treasure trove of information about Jewish women worldwide but is particularly strong on American Jewish women. The site includes an award-winning encyclopedia, online exhibits, historical documents of all kinds, educational materials and lesson plans, several blogs related to Jewish women’s history and Jewish feminism, book and film guides, and oral histories.

Nadell, Pamela S., ed. American Jewish Women’s History: A Reader. New York: NYU Press, 2003.This edited collection brings together a combination of classic and recent essays on American Jewish women’s history, one of the most vibrant subfields of American Jewish history. Covering topics as diverse as Jewish women garment workers, modern dancers, and religious educators, the essays thoroughly demonstrate the central role women have played in the development of the diverse American Jewish community.

Wenger, Beth S. The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America. New York: Doubleday, 2007.Wenger’s book is designed as a companion volume to the PBS documentary of the same name, but it goes much further. The beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated book contains numerous documents and provides a comprehensive narrative of American Jewish history that combines social, religious, economic, cultural, and political perspective.

Secondary Source Annotated Bibliography

Diner, Hasia R. The Jews of the United States, 1654-2000. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.Diner’s academic synthesis of American Jewish history focuses on the history of Jewish people in America and the constant renegotiation of American Jewish identity. As one of the foremost scholars of American Jewish women, Diner is especially sensitive to gender in her analysis. As in her earlier work, she also sees more continuities than dissimilarities in Jewish migrant experiences over the period stretching from 1820 to 1924.

Raphael, Marc Lee, ed. The Columbia History of Jews & Judaism in America. New York: Columbia UP, 2008.This edited collection brings together new essays on American Jewish history by a mix of junior and senior scholars. The first part of the book consists of chronological essays covering the sweep of American Jewish history. The second part includes thematic essays on topics as varied as Jewish education, Southern Jewish history, Holocaust consciousness, and American Jewish feminism.

Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2004.One of the most distinguished historians of the American Jewish experience working today, Sarna uses the tools of religious history to analyze American Judaism from the colonial period to the present. He focuses on major themes in American Jewish history, including concerns about assimilation, reformation of synagogues and Jewish religious life, and Jewish continuity. The book comprehensively covers both religious leaders and the experiences of “ordinary” American Jews.

Weissbach, Lee Shai. Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2005.Weissbach takes on the largely untold story of Jewish life in small-town America in this book, which reorients American Jewish history away from the large urban centers where much of it has centered. Familiar topics in American Jewish history, including intermarriage, congregational organization, and social life, look different when viewed from this angle. The book focuses on Jewish communities of less than 1000 people from the mid-19th century through World War II.

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